New Law Limits What Teachers Can Write Off For Educational Travel

PERSONAL FINANCE TAXES

August 19, 1990|By Julian Block

Tax reform restricts most deductions for education expenses. Also, it abolishes deductions for travel as a form of education - a break previously enjoyed by many people, particularly teachers with time for lengthy trips to far-off spots during school vacations or while on sabbatical leaves.

On the plus side, teachers and others are still able to take education deductions for spending they undertake either to maintain or improve skills required in their current jobs or businesses, or to meet the requirements of their employers or of laws and regulations for keeping their jobs. However, even if they satisfy those standards, they cannot deduct courses that enable them to meet the minimum educational requirements for future occupations or to qualify in new endeavors.

For example, the law prohibits any deductions by Norma Bates for courses she takes to meet the minimum requirements to get a license to teach Spanish at a high school. It is a different story, though, if Bates already teaches that language at a school and wants to switch to teaching French.

The Internal Revenue Service unreservedly bestows its blessings on deductions for courses to qualify her as a teacher of a different language; she is still in the same line of work. Moreover, her educational write-offs are not limited to her payments for the French courses. Her deductibles include travel to and from the schools at which she takes the courses, whether they are in the United States or in France.

Under previous laws, the cost of the travel itself, including meals and lodgings, usually qualified as a form of deductible education, as the trip enriched teaching skills. In most cases, the break was available to language teachers who spent their summer vacations in, say, Japan or Germany, where, though they took no courses, their travels enabled them to improve their understanding of the languages and cultures of those countries.

Now, though, absolutely no deductions are allowed for travel expenditures by teachers and others where their travel is a form of education. The prohibition applies to travel deductions that are allowable solely because the travel itself is educational.

Those restrictions are subject to an important exception. Tax reform kept write-offs for trips that are necessary to engage in activities that give rise to deductible education.

For example, Fred Dobbs is a Russian teacher who uses a sabbatical leave from his school to go to the Soviet Union to brush up on his accent and better his knowledge of its culture. He cannot deduct his travel costs as education expenses.

It makes no difference that he spent most his time visiting Soviet families and schools and attending movies, lectures and plays.